bottle up

phrasal verb

bottled up; bottling up; bottles up

: to keep (a feeling or emotion) inside instead of expressing it : to hide (a feeling or emotion)

She's kept her feelings about the accident bottled up for too long.

I know he's angry, but he bottles it up inside instead of talking to someone about it.

Examples of bottle up in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

For Russia, Iran helps bottle up Central Asia geographically, its trade and pipelines etc, thereby leaving a vast landmass dependent on Moscow’s stranglehold. —Melik Kaylan, Forbes.com, 22 Jan. 2026

House Speaker Matt Ritter made sure that Exum’s bill was debated after the measure had been bottled up earlier in the state Senate and never received a vote during the regular session. —Christopher Keating, Hartford Courant, 21 Jan. 2026

Nellie keeping things bottled up was a powder keg waiting to blow. —Lizz Schumer, PEOPLE, 20 Jan. 2026

Colder weather should call for more James Cook, the league’s leading rusher who got bottled up last weekend. —Steven Louis Goldstein, New York Times, 17 Jan. 2026

Rhymes for bottle up

• buttercup
• backup
• blowup
• breakup
• buildup
• checkup
• cleanup
• holdup
• hookup
• lineup
• lockup
• makeup